Hard to picture them as operas...

If you’re like me (and goodness knows, you should be), you probably can’t count the number of times you’ve sat at home watching The Manchurian Candidate on DVD and thinking to yourself, “This movie isn’t bad, but I’d really like to see it as an opera!” If you have had that thought (and I confess, I haven’t), the Minnesota Opera has heard you:  "The Minnesota Opera is commissioning a work based on The Manchurian Candidate, the 1959 political thriller that also was adapted into two movies...The new opera is scheduled to be performed in the 2014-15 season."

In the game of operatic-political one-upmanship, the Fort Worth Opera isn’t taking this lying down: Fort Worth Opera commissions work about JFK’s final day.

I’m not entirely sure what to think of these two developments, although I suspect they’ll either be works of genius or complete train wrecks. Of the two, I lean slightly toward the JFK opera, based solely on the success of John Adams’ Nixon in China. I would never have thought that would make a successful opera, let alone that I would have found it strangely affecting, and to that point it would seem that the story of JFK’s last day lends itself structurally and dramatically to a more compelling story.

I'm more leery when it comes to The Manchurian Candidate, though. First of all, unlike JFK, it’s a work of fiction, and whereas you can interpret many facets of a real-life story (precisely because there are so many of them), an existing work of fiction has a much narrower frame of reference with which to work. You can cite the fact that Candidate has already existed as a book and two different movies, but in doing so you invite the second challenge: the iconic status of the original 1962 movie, which starred Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey and Angela Lansbury. I haven’t seen the Denzel Washington/Meryl Streep remake, so it might well have stood on its own as a reimagination of the story*, but the original casts a shadow that’s very hard to get out from under.  As Terry Teachout recently said about such situations, "it's all but impossible to survive the comparison game."

*The original wasn't always faithful to the book either, but it got all the important things right.

Then there’s John Frankenheimer’s imaginative direction of the original, especially the famous “garden party” scene. How that winds up in the movie is difficult for me to imagine. Not impossible, mind you – just difficult. Very difficult.

But who knows? I’ve been wrong before (many times), and I’ll be wrong again (many times, which, come to think of it, is a reason you might not want to be like me after all). Candidate does come with solid credentials: composer Kevin Puts, who won the Pulitzer for his opera Silent Night, also done for Minnesota. I could be just as surprised by this as I was by Nixon in China. We’ll have to see.

I can’t help but think though, and not for the last time, that if it’s political opera you want why not remount something like Menotti’s The Consul, as timeless as they come? Or you could look to an opera that deserves to reemerge on the scene: Pizzetti's Assassino Nella Cattedrale, his interpretation of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.  Having just seen this, I'll have more thoughts to share in an upcoming piece.

***

Bobby passes along a sad note on a loss to the opera community:

Shanghai-born mezzo Zheng Cao, 46, died last Thursday night at her San Francisco home after a long battle with cancer.  Her roles include "Madama Butterfly," "Idomeneo," "The Mother of Us All," and "The Bonesetter's Daughter."  She is survived by Dr. David Larson, her parents, and a sister. ◙

This cheese has holes in it

Classic Our Word

Fulton J. Sheen once wrote that "Knowledge of the moral life is conditioned upon the removal of all prejudice.  Not everything that is novel is true, and what is called modern, may be only a new label for an old error."  That quote put me in mind of a piece I wrote back in 2005, in the first months of this blog.  Many things have changed since then, but my feelings on this banal book have, if anything, intensified over the years.  An oldie, but I think it's still a goodie.


Every once in a while you stumble on something that perfectly fits the mood you're in. It's even better when you find this completely by accident, without even looking for it.

Such is the pleasant coincidence I had looking through Eve Tushnet's blog this evening, wanting something to write about. (It's not that I don't lack for subject matter; it's Friday and I'm tired - I lack for energy!) I followed her link to Doublethink, where she'd had a piece published recently. And here, in the table of contents, I came upon this article: "Who Moved My Cheese? and the Meaning of Life," by Peter J. Hansen. With a subtitle reading, "How business bestsellers help impoverish our souls," it was irrestible.

I read Who Moved My Cheese? once, and considered myself both richer and poorer for it. Poorer, in that I was exposed to thinking and writing so banal that I could easily have become depressed at my own lack of success in getting published. Richer, in the sense that I was both encouraged ("Hey, if he can get published, anyone can!") and in knowing that I'd never run out of things to write about, thanks to the unlimited pablum in Spencer Johnson's "book".*

*Richer also in that I was given the book at the job I had at the time, which means I didn't have to pay for it.  As the man said, "free is good."

Ever since the birth of this blog almost a year ago, I'd intended to write about Cheese. I'd gotten as far as doing a first draft of a fairly lengthy, if sloppy, post. There wasn't a month gone by that I hadn't meant to get back to work on it. But other things would always come up, often pieces that I found easier to compose, and Cheese remained on the back burner. Thanks to Peter Hansen, it's time to move it to the front.

Hansen only tangentially touches on Johnson's magnum awful, concentrating on the business book world in general. And what he sees isn't pretty:

In general, the business book genre reflects and reinforces our desire to make careers fill a place in our souls that they cannot truly fill. As human beings we want more out of life than jobs can provide - and thank God for that - but many or most of us don't know where else to turn. The business book genre as we know it is born of that emptiness; and it issues in emptiness as well. The lonely hunger of atomized individuals invites the empty promises of (mostly unwitting) false prophets. Whatever faults Americans had in the generations before we acquired a taste for these books (and no doubt we had many), we do not seem to have gained in self-understanding or happiness.

One of the reasons I never finished my piece on Cheese was that I knew I'd have to go back and read it again in order to get my facts straight, and I figured I'd wait for a really, really bad sin to pop up in confession so that I might suggest to the priest that I read Cheese as a penance.

But I don't think I need to reread this cheesy book to know that the central premise is a dangerous one: the idea that nobody is in control. Sure, as Christians we understand that the strength that lives in us comes from the reality that God, not us, is in charge. So there is a benefit to understanding that we can't control everything. But Cheese goes one step further, suggesting a nihilistic world in which an unseen hand maliciously manipulates our actions, moving the cheese around the maze like a deranged scientist experimenting on rats.

Why do I use the word nihlistic? Because in Johnson's world, no one has the answers. The fact that the book has become popular with CEOs everywhere (including, as Hansen dryly points out, some of the most unsuccessful companies in business today) indicates that the lesson applies to them as well: even a billionaire CEO has to react to circumstances beyond his control. And while there's something levelling in this (the idea that your boss, no matter how glib he or she might be, could just as easily be steamrolled as you), there's also something disturbing, at least to my mind.

For where, in the world that Johnson describes, is the motive in living? Free will would seem to be a farce; your only choice is to adapt or die. There's no suggestion that your decisions can play a an active role in shaping your future, that God has an interactive plan for us all. No, the message is that change happens, there's nothing you can do about it, get used to it. No wonder we look for refuge in sex, drugs and rock 'n roll - or in the increasingly impersonal Internet. Having already discovered the dehumanizing world of Corporate America, which breeds cynicism and despair the same way mosquitos breed disease, why bother to have any human interaction at all?

Hansen does cite business books that seem, however imperfectly, to recognize this. In Now, Discover Your Strengths, authors Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton "argue that it is generally more important to develop one's strengths or talents than to overcome one's weaknesses. 'Without underlying talent, learning a skill is a survival technique, not a path to glory.'" However, Hansen adds, the book is flawed by the "apparent absence of the thought that there is something higher than being an effective cog in the economic wheel":

The problem isn't merely that the authors are looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. One subtle effect of books like this is to redefine human strengths as the ones that productive organizations in fact need. The authors encourage us to discover our strengths so that we can put them to use in our careers. Thus empathy makes one suited for sales (rather than, say, friendship or raising children); imagination makes one suited for formulating business strategy (rather than art or, if allied with other abilities, philosophy or science); and so forth. There is no suggestion that our strengths or virtues point to anything higher than our careers. The book implies, or at least encourages the reader to feel, that one should either redirect or neglect those strengths that have no economic application.

Hansen explains that "[s]mall organizations (including families) can experiment with giving their members a high level of autonomy; but this is much more difficult for large organizations." This would have come as no surprise to G.K. Chesterton, who raised precisely this point in arguing against the dangers of Big Business. Although Hansen doesn't use the term, the employes he describes - those for whom "[s]ubordination and drudgery are inevitably part of the job" - are living, breathing examples of Chesterton's "wage slaves."

The modern company in Corporate America does recognize the existence of human beings, and the necessity of satisfying their needs. However, the humans they serve are not the employees, but the stockholders; and the needs are not spiritual, but material - the bottom line is, indeed, the bottom line.
Hansen makes a telling observation about the change in the relationship between our work lives and, for lack of a better word, our "real" lives:

As late as the 1950s, most men saw their jobs primarily as a means of supporting their families, the most important thing in their lives. As the success of books like Now, Discover Your Strengths attests, many men and women now look to their careers to provide the central satisfaction or meaning in their lives.

Corporate America not only reflects this change in our priorities, it's been the agent of the new reality. And they expect us to put up with it, indeed to thrive in its toxic atmosphere. As Johnson says, when your cheese is moved you don't stand around wondering what happened; you accept and adapt to change, because there's nothing else you can do.

But that's where corporate martinets are wrong, for there is something we can do about it. There always is. For starters, we can reject the world painted by Johnson and his like-minded cronies. We can fight back against the idea that we're only puppets in a deist world, that we've been left alone to bob up and down in the cruel seas of life, buffeted by these incessent winds of change. By applying logic, reason and critical thought we can use our minds - our God-given minds, infused by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit - to determine the proper response to a new idea. And we can realize that there is a place to go for answers, and Someone Who can and will give us the straight scoop, unlike the impotent CEOs that live an implied existence in Johnson's maze.

Sometimes change must be embraced, or even championed (the civil rights struggle, let's say), but sometimes it must be fought - to the death if necessary (the heresy of the Reformation, to cite just one example). The past, just because it's old, doesn't always deserve to be swept under the rug every time something new comes along; the new, just because it's new, shouldn't automatically be seen as preferable. That might be the way Elizabeth Taylor treated her husbands, but human dignity deserves and demands more.

And you're not going to get it by eating cheese that's been left out in the open for too long. ◙

This Just In

New Senate Child Care Center To Open for Discovered "Lost" Kids

(WASHINGTON, D.C.- February 25, 2013) A little-heralded appropriations bill sailed quietly through the Senate yesterday that will provide $25-million in funding to establish a multi-story child-care center--located adjacent to the Senate chamber itself--that will provide free, daily care for the previously unacknowledged children of Senators and ex-Senators who, until recently, no one knew existed.

"This may not be understood by everyone, but we want to meet the needs of the children, which after all, is paramount to our nation's ideals and values," said John Edwards, former senator from North Carolina, who was one of the first to enroll his child in the center. "We all could have been a bit more forthcoming in these matters, perhaps, but given the challenges of issues like national security, the national debt and financial cliffs, international terrorism, and the like, we just didn't think the American people needed to fret about these personal matters. This will also help working families which deserves a higher priority on the national agenda."

The Center, tentatively known as the Strom Thurmond Memorial Child Care and Life Enrichment Center, will provide 24-hour-a-day care for the children, along with limo transporation to the facility. A special unit of the Secret Service will make sure the names of the children will not be released to the public, and large pieces of black construction paper were already in place on the windows of the facility to block attempts to see who is inside.

Former Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, who is serving as honorary chair of the Center's foundation, did speak briefly with reporters after leaving the building yesterday. "This would have been a nice to have around in my day," he said. "It would have given us a chance to see our kids more since it is so conveniently located. But at least today's Senators, and the Senators of the future, will be able to establish an even better work-life balance than we did. We can all be proud of this."

Children in the Center will receive free services from trained child care specialists, licensed nurses, and dieticians, as well as free health care for life for them, their parents, grandparents, siblings, and close friends.

Why Washington matters

Today is the birthday of not only our greatest president, but the greatest American – George Washington. And that duel fact is why Washington, and not Lincoln or FDR or even Reagan, is the president that matters most to America nowadays.

It’s fashionable to talk of Lincoln as the greatest president, even when there’s not a big-screen movie about his life, and his name habitually tops the “greatest president ever” lists. But while Abraham Lincoln was unquestionably a man of towering strength who almost willed the Union to remain united, I’ve always had some trouble reconciling his presidency with the values of the Founders. Lincoln created a much larger, more powerful, more intrusive Federal government; he showed scant regard for freedom (of the press, of the accused, etc.), and his decision to compel the Southern states to remain in the Union at gunpoint is still, in my mind, problematic.

One could make the case that membership in the United States is a voluntary one, and that when the government of a state feels that they are no longer represented by the laws, values and will of the larger body, that government has the right (if not the obligation) to withdraw from that union. Lincoln’s conduct of the Civil War certainly puts that idea to rest for many people, although I don’t know that he established any kind of legal authority that definitively denies the right of secession.

However, my larger point here is to neither praise nor bury Lincoln, but to extoll the virtues of G. Washington. Here we have a man who attained great power and voluntarily relinquished it, not once but twice, earning the admiration of the world.

As general he successfully led the American army; he may not have been a military genius, but he executed a strategy that ultimately achieved its aim. (Think of him as a basketball coach who designed and implemented a gameplan that stymied the other team, didn’t allow them to play their own style, and ultimately frustrated them into making critical mistakes. “Winning ugly” is still winning.) He withstood miserable support from his own government, used his stature to quash a potential rebellion, and repeatedly declined suggestions that he use the post-war army to seize power.

As president he assumed an office that had been virtually created with him in mind,* and governed with no blueprint to follow, no precedent by which he could be guided. Everything he did created precedent, and he was acutely aware of this. He refused to impose his own political positions on legislation that, though he may have disagreed with, he nonetheless felt was legal and within the Constitutional province of Congress. He conducted himself with immense dignity and won the respect and love of his fellow countrymen. And, at the end of two terms of office, with no limit as to how many times he could be reelected, he once again voluntarily stepped down, preferring to return home to Virginia.

*In drawing up the job description the framers of the Constitution had no trouble granting presidential power to Washington, who could be trusted with it. Their worry was whether or not it could be trusted to those who followed him.

Like his aide and Treasury Secretary Hamilton, Washington was a Federalist. He recognized the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and understood the need for a strong Federal government to hold the disparate pieces of the country together. He knew that as head of state he represented not only the American people but the American ideal; although he personally was never able to become a biological father, he viewed all Americans – not only those living, but those for decades and centuries to come – as his children, and he saw the United States as the legacy to be bequeathed to them. It was with this in mind that he served, as soldier, landowner, businessman, general, president and patriot.

Washington had confidence in America. He did not see the people as infants to be protected by an overweening Big Brother of a Federal government, but as stewards of a creation which he had helped to bring about. He was admired around the world and revered in his country (“First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”), which not only named its capital city after him (and many other cities as well, plus a state), but put his visage on the dollar bill, the quarter, the Purple Heart, the side of a mountain, and many other places. His monument in D.C. is not an enormous statue, a Greek temple, or a recitation of achievements, but a simple obelisk that soars toward the sky.

Some say that George Washington was the first American. I would add that he was not only the first, but the greatest. And the fact that a nation could not produce greater than its first is not a denigration of America, but a tribute to the greatness of that man – a greatness which, I fear, we shall never see the likes of again. ◙

Defiance using opera leads to a DQ at the Marathon

Our Word is naturally big on classical music. We have an appreciation of the orchestra and opera, as you've likely read throughout the years we've written. But an incident last year at Bi-Lo Myrtle Beach Marathon XIV turned out to be a disaster for poor Bobby.

After a flu bug weakened me in the last seven days, I thought I was over it by that Thursday and felt confident I could take a shot at marathon #9. About 30km into the race, I came down with dehydration and cramps, and an official wanted me off course, calling an ambulance. After waiting 30 minutes I felt I could continue after hydrating, even becoming defiant I wanted to continue (which I did with a 7:24 marathon). Even was defiant I told a medical tent in humour that I wanted to kill myself off the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno if I wasn't allowed to continue, and those of us who appreciate opera understand the meaning. But I thought I was safe.

Turns out a few days ago, the medical official called race directors and sent me a note that I had been effectively disqualified from this year's race by the medical official who rejected the entry after it had been approved. I was outraged. He thought I was an emotional basket case, with the problem being my satirical look at failure from opera's eyes.

So as events keep adding rock bands, have we lost the art of satire and the look at classical music? When you are taught in your youth failure means you become a beggar on the streets, that's one thing. Failure is symbolised by death as we've seen in entertainment, whether it is failing a video game (your character dies), game shows (on foreign versions of "Family Feud," wrong answers are called losing a life; the term here is a strike), or tragic characters in opera. As an opera fan, failure is akin to watching Lauretta jump off the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno (which she didn't) or Magda Sorel stuff herself in the gas oven of the family kitchen (which she did, leading to the lore between a master's student teacher and her older adult student), let alone Tosca jumping off the castle into her death down below. I don't want that. The ultimate meaning is failure. Sadly, we have people do not appreciate classical music or opera today. They probably did not understand my anger being cast into an opera, and thought I was being too serious.

Mona Charen is right about our society after the Presidential inauguration. We do need a greater appreciation of serious, high culture again. It's clear the lack of understanding of high culture led to my suspension and disqualification, and her January column shows we've lost the seriousness when the Presidential inauguration went to the gutter. "Gutter" music (see the trends towards garage-type rock bands on courses) is not something I can understand compared to the sound of serious music. But gutter music thinking does hurt our society. ◙

The inside story behind the Pope's abdication

"Holy straw sack!  Tomorrow I'll quit!"

Jack of all trades

Terry Teachout makes a very interesting observation in a recent post:

"For some reason that I don't fully understand, I decided around the time that I graduated from college that I didn't want to specialize in anything, thus ensuring that I wouldn't become an academic, much less a professional musician."

I can understand this on many levels.  Not that I ever desired to be a professional musician, or fancied that I could become an academic, but to me life can be so boring if you stick to one thing and one thing only.  That's one of the things that's challenged me not only as a writer, but for life in general*. It also, however, makes things a lot more interesting.

*I can't, for example, imagine loving your job so much that you make it the focal point of your life.  On the other hand, it may mean I've got undiagnosed ADHD.

My work as a writer - indeed, the very existence of this blog - reflects these divided interests.  Just what is Our Word all about?  Well, it started as a predominantly Catholic blog but, as I've alluded to in the past, so much of the Catholic blogosphere can be both venomous and ignorant that it's a wonder there's anyone left in it, other than those who like to peddle venom and ignorance.  A few years ago we did the "Our Word Enemies List," a link to which could be found on the sidebar for years.*  Had I chosen, I could have made an entire enemies list solely from Catholic blogs.  But what's the fun in that?

*It can still be tracked down through the search function. 

Truth is, there are many things I'm interested in, and interested in writing about.  Religion still plays a part in that, but there's so much more - history, politics, sports, opera, literature.  On top of that, of course, I started a new blog totally devoted to television and culture; and while I spend most of my time there, there are still going to be things I want to write about that only fit in here. (My colleagues' interests are similarly varied, which makes the blog something of a smorgasbord - we are, after all, still a "Journal of Cultured Opinions.")  And then there are the long-form projects I want to pursue - fiction, cultural histories, more extensive writing on television.  Honestly, I can't imagine what the fun is in writing (or being interested in) only one thing, or a handful of things.  Because of those varied interests, my knowledge of any specific area might not be as deep as I'd like it to be*, and it may make me more reluctant to engage in discussions with those whose level of expertise exceeds mine.  But on the other hand, when I go into my library I'm seldom bored.


*You've heard of the saying, "Jack of all trades; master of none."

More importantly, however, I think that having various interests like this helps me achieve a perspective in a particular area that I might not otherwise have.  I would argue, for example, that my interest in television has greatly informed my perceptions of politics and sports, and vice versa.  Without this holistic approach, you really are only getting part of the story.  And if wanting to understand why something is the way it is causes me to spend time researching something else, all the better.  As my wife says, you can learn something new every day if you're not careful.

And that's the challenge to life: to keep the mind healthy and active.  The world is, to coin a phrase, a big and beautiful place, and it's a crime not to sample as much of it as you can.  ◙

Stray thoughts on Benedict XVI

For many of us, it's been a year or so of klongs*.   First there was the surprise Obamacare decision by the Supreme Court; next it was the not-particularly-suprising-but-still-disappointing reelection of the President in November.  Now it's the abdication of Benedict XVI.  One wonders how many more klongs the heart can take before it blows up completely.

*This is a wonderful term I've used now for many years, which comes from William Safire's novel Full Disclosure, which he describes as  "A sudden rush of s**t to the heart" (minus the asterisks).  As Safire puts it, "It's the feeling you get when you're having a drink with a friend at your friendly tavern and all of a sudden it dawns on you that at that exact moment four people are standing on your doorstep, ringing the bell and expecting the dinner to which you've invited them." 

Of the three, Benedict's announcement on Monday was probably the biggest klong of all.  Whereas there had been at least a possibility of the other two events happening, this one was completely out of left field.  Yes, I know that in the past he'd talked about the propriety of a pope resigning, but it still wasn't something one could expect. 

One of the reasons this ranked as a particularly brutal klong was the knowledge of how the story would be played.  Predictably, the media have made a hash of it, trying to apply theories of temporal politics to a spiritual situation, with an added dollop of ideological hatred thrown in.  And in truth, it is a hard situation to grasp.  As the American Spectator's Aaron Goldstein recounted a conversation he had with co-workers, "The consensus [which Goldstein did not share] was that he was either forced out or that he had done something untoward."

The Catholic blogosphere has been equally alive with speculation, rumor and opinion, and - in my opinion* - most of it has been just as ill-informed and, let's not beat around the bush here, stupid. (One reason I've largely abandoned that arena.)  Some of it has been negative ("Benedict is shirking his responsibility!  Why couldn't he have hung in there like JPII?") while others, like Goldstein's co-workers, see an ulterior motive ("The Curia forced him out!  He finally threw up his hands and gave up!").  Some are emotional ("I feel betrayed!  When I heard the news I wept uncontrollably!"), and some are coldly Machiavellian ("He's using his German cunning to prepare a trap for the Wolves chomping at his heels!").  Some despair, seeing nothing but calamity in store for the Church. Some even look at the prophesies of Malachy and see the end of the world approaching.

*An opinion which I happen to hold in high regard.

The ones I like the most, the ones that mirror my own feeling, say simply - we can't know.  Understanding this is above our pay grade.  I don't know the truth of what goes on in the Vatican.  I don't know the truth of Benedict's health.  I don't know what he feels the Holy Spirit is compelling him to do, and I'm not privy to his conversations with God.  I don't know what the future of the Catholic Church looks like other than Christ's assurance that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against it.

If you were to ask for my educated guess, I'd say that Benedict believes the Church is in a perilous time, facing a grave and immediate threat - one that requires a Pontiff with physical as well as mental energy, one who can not only stand up to the threat, but fight back.  It's all well and good to suggest, as some do, that God would have provided whatever Benedict might have lacked, but as Christ says, His ways are not our ways.  Perhaps what God provided him with was the courage to abdicate in the face of people who would not understand.  But again, this is just speculation, and I've no more insight into this than the average man on the street.

Again, we don't know, and we shouldn't pretend that we do.  It's time for us to take "His ways, not ours" a little more seriously.  Don't second-guess the Pope - if we believe that he is indeed the Vicar of Christ, we have to assume that he might have just a little more insight into things than we do.  If we believe that the Gates of Hell will not prevail, we shouldn't worry unduly about the future.  If the Holy Spirit does indeed drive the Cardinal electors, let's let the Spirit do his thing.  And, in the name of all that is good and holy, let's stop analyzing this as if it was American politics and the Pope was the president.  Let's quit thinking of Benedict as a CEO and the Papacy as a "job."   If we direct our minds in the spiritual, rather than temporal, direction, I think we'll all feel a lot better about it.

This rampant speculation, opining and, no pun intended, pontificating, isn't doing anyone any good, and in some cases it may be causing scandal.  Want to do something?  Try prayer instead.  Take our Lent a little more seriously.  Sacrifice and do penance.  Release the burden of worry and uncertainty - a very real burden, by the way, which I think a lot of us feel - and, in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, "Don't have a cow, man."  ◙

A note from the editor

For some reason, the "Comments" function currently seems to be missing from old posts.  (Not that we get that many comments anyway.)  So if you feel the need to offer an opinion, please email us.  We'll try to have this rectified as soon as possible. ◙

Opening Day

It may only be the 8th of February, but it’s still Opening Day. That is, if you have Strat-O-Matic Baseball.

Like most kids, I played board games when I was growing up. My own interests ran toward sports games – games like All-Star Baseball, which featured real players and was designed to reproduce their performance with deadly statistical accuracy. The first game of this kind I ever bought was called Negamco Golf, which was made by a company in Duluth.* I suppose the fact that my first game was a golf game indicated I was going to grow up to be a Republican, but at the time it was more likely because I was a fan of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and the other giants of the game.

*I always liked ordering things from that company; not just games, but books, posters, sports cards. This was back in the days when mail order meant four to six weeks, but because of their proximity to Minneapolis, I’d have my order by the end of the week.

In my early teens I came to a rite of passage: my first Strat-O-Matic baseball game. I’d played the game with some of my friends and enjoyed it, and so I saved up my pennies and ordered one, back when you could only get it through the mail. It was, I believe, a replay of the 1974 season – I can verify this because it was for the season when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, and as I set out to replay that season, Aaron hit three home runs in the season opener against Cincinnati, thus breaking the record right then and there.*

*Which would never have happened in real life. The Braves opened the season with three games on the road against Cincinnati; Aaron homered in the first game to tie Ruth, and the Braves sat him down, wanting him to break the record in Atlanta. They were warned by the Commissioner about this and Aaron did play in the series closer, but still broke the record at home. Obviously I hadn’t yet developed my obsession with accuracy.

Strat-O-Matic was a great game, but eventually I lost interest in it. It was a combination of things; I was for the most part a solitary kid, which meant that most of the time I was playing by myself, and that can only take you so far. The baseball season was also very long – 162 games per team, 12 teams (at that time) per league, and since I was playing all the games myself, it was likely that most of these players would, in real life, be long since retired by the time I completed the season replay.

One of the coolest games ever

I was also at an age where I preferred football to baseball, and since I also had a football game – NFL Strategy Football, which didn’t have real-life players, but was strategically quite advanced (hence the name). Replaying a football season meant I could start my own league, with fewer teams playing fewer games. A 12-team league each playing 16 games was easy enough to manage, and manage that I did, for nearly 20 years.*

*Or until I got married. Having my own football league was fun, but having a wife is more fun. 

The emphasis in today’s gaming world is on electronics, hyper realistic graphics, joysticks. Those can be fun, but I feel sorry for kids who don’t know the drama that comes from flipping a card over, rolling a pair of dice, spinning the arrow on the dial, waiting to see what statistically accurate cards combined with random chance can combine. I never needed all the fancy stuff; the stadiums, the fans, the announcers, the players – they all existed up here, in the mind, and that was a greater, more vivid thrill than any video game could ever produce.

So have at it, Strat-O-Matic fans. And if you ever need one more player to fill out the league, I just might be able to be coaxed out of retirement. ◙

Of the Anglican Schism, NBA threats, and Dear Leader

Frank Larisey, an independent Anglican minister who is part of the Diocese of South Carolina (the group that split from The Episcopal Church in November), wrote an article tracing the corruption of their seminaries more than a century and a half ago that led to the historic November breakaway from the national denomination of an entire region that spans half of our state.

A California lawmaker is threatening Microsoft because the CEO is involved in the purchase of a National Basketball Association franchise in Sacramento (see the Jack Twyman article in regards to the franchise's historic roots) and relocation to Microsoft's headquarters.

Michael Brown reacts to the inaugural speech of Dear Leader, noting that his goal is to put Christians in hiding as sexual deviants gain special rights and can banish Christianity.

Bob Unruh reports on the Department of Social Engineering's increasing push where women in combat becomes legal; lower standards will likely be the result. Why do we need to lower our standards? Where would the motivation be in our society?  ◙

Testing time!

At Jim's Sunday evening Bible study, we were given a selection of questions from the 2010 Pew Rearch Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life poll in 2010 to test our knowledge, with the questions relevant to Christianity only given (we were not given questions unrelated with our study) to the class. We were astonished of the Bible Knowledge questions how many did not answer the questions correctly.

As Our Word does discuss faith issues, we'll see how many of you can answer these questions -- NO USE OF ANY SEARCH ENGINE TO FIND THE ANSWERS. And no, this is NOT an open book test! I missed one, and that I shall not mention.

Please be careful and phrase #10, #11, and #12 in the form of a question!

1. What is the first book of the Bible? 
2. What are the names of the first four books of the New Testament ("the Four Gospels")? 
3. Where, according to the Bible, was Jesus born? 
4. Of these four, one is NOT in the Ten Commandments. Identify the one NOT in the Ten Commandments: a) Do unto others as done unto you; b) Do not commit adultery; c) No stealing; d) Keep the Sabbath 
5. Which figure is associated with remaining obedient to God despite suffering? 
6. Which figure is associated with leading the exodus from Egypt? 
7. Which figure is associated with willingness to sacrifice his son for God?
8. What is Catholic teaching about bread and wine in Communion? They are the body and blood of Christ They are symbols 
9. Which Group traditionally teaches salvation is through faith alone? Protestants Catholics Both Neither 
10. Of Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Mormonism, it was the faith of Mother Teresa. 
11. Of Luther, Aquinas, and Wesley, his writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation. 
12. Of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and William Franklin (Billy) Graham Jnr, he was an evangelist in the First Great Awakening.

Have fun guys! ◙

Mourning 40 years of muder, legalised by courts, and the loss of the Sanctity of Human Life

Ive marched 16 times and have been part of our state’s Citizens for Life dinner or other related events, whether it’s dinner with Suzanne Schindler or lunch with Jennifer O’Neill. Watching Michael Clancy’s photograph of a baby with spina bifida being operated in utero before his birth was enough this year to witness what we saw. 

But sadly, I was appalled at what I saw during our March for Life again. A group of Protestants protested the 40th annual march in our state because the march was led by the Knights of Columbus. This is not an issue between faiths, it is an issue of the sanctity of human life, and we just passed the said Sunday in churches, no longer observed nationally following Dear Leader’s decision to purge the pro-life day while celebrating sexual deviancy “pride” month. Why would people complain about Catholics and Protestants marching for the protection of the life of a child? At our annual banquet, only two denominations were represented – Catholics and Baptists.

Forty years is too much. When we now have a Governor in New York who is an odds-on favourite to become President in 2016 pushing for baby murder all the way into birth and beyond, even ordering Catholic hospitals to close, we are seeing the humanist agenda against life, motivated by a President who has forced faith-based firms to pay for baby murder or face heavy fines (see Hobby Lobby), and over 50 million dead in these baby murder mills, I think of this ill-informed generation that trusts MTV has created a mess reversing gains of the life movement as a generation of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” will listen to what their “dear leaders” will advance.

We've lost millions of children in these gruesome attacks each day, bigger assault weapons than what Dear Leader claims, yet there is no call from him to ban these “assault weapons” that penetrate the skulls of real children. When the National Abortion Rights Action League is glorified and coverage for killing babies is now required under new mandates passed under the “Affordable” Care Act, where does that lead us?

An entire generation of work has now been wiped out by one ferocious dictator. And we mourn for those who have been slaughtered in the 40 years since. I fear now that with the Obama courts everything we've accomplished will be reversed, and the right to kill children and adults that you don't like will become law by judicial fiat.

And it's not just those in the womb. The result is without the sanctity of human life, anyone that a person does not like can be slaughtered at the will of someone who has ulterior motives. Witness Michael Schiavo's fight to kill his wife, the Oregon “death with dignity” law, and the Belgian twins' euthanasia because the deaf were now blind. Are we in a dangerous era of eugenics again?

Kyrie Eleison

I have Mozart's “Dies Irae” from his Requiem in my head in memory of those who have died in the womb in these forty years. ◙
 

Pierced by a Lance

"I am shocked — shocked — to find gambling going on in here."

- Captain Louis Renault, as played by Claude Raines in Casablanca

I suppose there are still people out there who were shocked to see the reports that Lance Armstrong admitted his drug use to National Conscience Oprah Winfrey last night, in an interview to be broadcast Thursday.  I suppose we'll have to wait until then to see what he actually said, and how he explained it away, but that hasn't stopped people from commenting on it in the meantime.  And one school of thought we're hearing is a variation on the "Robin Hood" theme, i.e. that Armstrong did so much good in his lifetime outside of the cycling game, he raised funds (mostly from big corporations that could afford it) and awareness for cancer, he was an inspirational leader, Livestrong, yada, yada, yada.

That's an interesting proposition, that the good Armstrong's done outweighs his personal failings, one that I thought was worth an experiment.  Let's try the following statements on for size, and see what your reaction is to each of them:

• "I know he's cheating on me, but he provides for me and my children, so I can't really deny that."


• "I may have lied to the American people about a break-in, but I was going to win reelection anyway, and Watergate doesn't really diminish the end of the Vietnam War, my trip to China, and the other things I've accomplished, right?"


• "Perhaps the stem cells did come from aborted babies, but they saved my life, so I'm not complaining that someone had to die so I could live."

• "So what if I did steal that money from the insurance company?  They can afford it, and anyway, I gave all the money to feed starving children.  What's the difference?"

Chances are that most of you were offended by at least one, if not all, of these statements.  Perhaps they struck close to home for some of you.  At any rate, I doubt that anyone out there would have agreed with all four of them.

Presumably there are those who feel themselves taken in by the manufactured aura that surrounded Armstrong.  And, human nature being what it is, we're loathe to blame ourselves, to suggest that we should have known better.  We don't want to think, even in private, that we might have been stupid enough to fall for this con artist's story, hook, line and sinker.  That's understandable, and so to cover ourselves we might want to provide cover for Armstrong.  We tell others (because we're really telling ourselves) that although he might have been wrong, he did so much that was good that we can somehow excuse, at least in part, the bad things.

And in so doing we're really suggesting that these good works and charitable endeavors somehow excuse at least some of his sins, that he likely wouldn't have been able to accomplish all these things without the fame that came from winning seven Tour de France titles. That, in essence, the end justify the means.

Now, it's a generally accepted part of Christian theology that good ends never justify bad means (while at the same time it's acknowledged that God can always bring forth good even from the worst actions).  But since Lance Armstrong is a secular humanist, a non-believer, that doesn't enter into the equation.  Having said that, would we suggest that bombing a city in Afghanistan and killing 100,000 innocent people (assuming one could verify such a thing) would have been justified had we been able to guarantee Osama Bin Laden would have died in the wreckage?  After all, the end justifies the means.

The libel lawsuits he filed against journalists.  The threats and intimidation he leveled against colleagues.  The brazen lying to the world press and public.  Are we to assume that all of this was justified simply because he was able to do something "good"?  Is that what we're supposed to tell David Walsh, whose employer (The Sunday Times) paid £600,000 to settle a libel case brought by Armstrong after Walsh exposed some of his tactics?  Or Emma O'Reilly, former masseuse for Armstrong's team, who said Armstrong "tried to make my life a living hell" after she told what she knew about drug use within the team? People's reputations were damaged; the trust of their colleagues was threatened; their lives, indeed, were made "hell" - all because Lance Armstrong acted against them for making accusations that, he knew all along, were true. But then we shouldn't worry about that if the end justify the means.

You and I were bilked out of some of our money, since the U.S. Postal Service sponsored Armstrong's team and paid something in the neighborhood of $31 million as part of an agreement that stipulated "no performance-enhancing drugs."  Granted, the government being the government, that money probably would have been wasted somewhere else anyway, but it still peeves me anyway, and I'm not likely to feel more sanguine about it if you tell me that the end justifies the means.

People heard about Lance Armstrong's foundation through his fame; they were moved by the story of a cancer survivor who overcame the odds to become a would champion.  And they gave money to that foundation assuming it to be honest because they believed in the man who started it, and while there's no evidence that anything unethical has ever gone on there, it was the trustworthiness of Lance Armstrong that the organization banked on.  Even the most naïve among us might see the potential for an ethical conflict here, given the fiction that was Armstrong's reputation.  But in this cynical world, where we've seen so many trustworthy institutions come under scrutiny (and often fall short), should we give Armstrong a free pass because, after all, the end justifies the means?

Once upon a time there was something called "character."  It's a hard thing to define, I suppose, but there was a day when it was considered very important.  It often went hand-in-hand with something known as "principle" and people's actions were often analyzed based on how they measured up in relation to these two qualities.

We're also told not to judge someone's heart, for only God can read what is held in secret.  For us to take the measure of a man, we have to look at his public statements and actions - tangible things that we can see and appreciate, even if we don't always understand them. 

And by that standard we know that Lance Armstrong was a cheat, a liar, and a fraud.  We know that he hurt, or tried to hurt, other people in order to protect this fraudulent life.  I wouldn't presume to call him an "evil" man - that's reading his heart, remember - but I will say that he did evil things.  And the end, no matter how noble or good we want to think it is, can never be justified by that.

As for Armstrong himself: how, then, to wrap up his sordid tale?  I can't think of anything better than the words of Oliver Cromwell as he dismissed the Rump Parliament in 1653.

"You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."  ◙

A few notes

Life. The March for Life is coming either this week or next week, depending on your state chapter of the National Right to Life organisation. Don't forget about it! Our state dinner tickets are set and I'm set to march for the sixteenth time!

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. It's no longer a day celebrated by the White House with this totalitarian in chief who wants as many babies (and adults) dead as possible to advance his agenda. But how many churches will be observing it the next two weeks?

Totalitarianism? Just noted Bill O'Reilly commented on the President's clear move towards a dictatorship of "Dear Leader." I've seen too many moves where he has aimed towards that tactic, whether it is energy, fuel economy, the financial crisis, and now guns.

Emergent! While the controversy over Louie Giglio at the Coronation of Dear Leader was massive because he would violate the New World Order's rule on hate speech (anything opposed to sexual deviants is hate speech to the NWO), people never discussed the questionable theology of Passion and the related movement. How can any of us, Protestant or Catholic, sit in the middle of these Life Enhancement Centres, drowned out by 100 dB rock music, with such questionable garbage dominating the service?

Bottom of the Barrel? A complaint I heard on social media last night was how a "celebrity diving" show, taken from European concepts, was brought to the United States as filler before the biggest show of the second half of the television regular season. These are Olympic sports we rarely hear but every four years, but isn't it time that these sports are shown more often on network television, even if it is in stranger situations such as celebrities trying it? They called it scraping to the bottom of ideas for television, but if you're the United States Olympic Committee and the National Governing Bodies of the sports in question, how much positive exposure is it to see celebrities trying it? Imaging a celebrity Modern Pentathlon, Biathlon (shooting and cross-country skiing), or even team handball (a sport in its professional level that that Al-Jazeera has carried on its airwaves) and water polo?

Don't Be Fooled. Time Warner Cable dropped Ovation, which angered many in the arts field, but it was not mentioned in the way Current was dropped after Al-Jazeera's purchase. Remember they added Al-Jazeera's BeIn, a channel we mentioned in the summer that carries the BBVA League and Serie A among notable football leagues, and is rapidly growing because of it. While they lost to Comcast the rights to the biggest of the leagues, they still carry the serious leagues with names such as Barca and Real.

Prayer Request. My grandmother had a urinary tract infection three weeks ago, and released from the hospital Tuesday, she is still recovering (and 92). Keep her in your prayers as she continues to recover from the nastiness of the antibiotics she was taken and the other things that happened to her. ◙

Our Word 2012 in review

Life Imitates Art.Hendrick Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne missed his team's stop during the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour because he was on jury duty. Considering he drives for the #5 team, and a 2008 #5 team shirt was worn by a Gentleman of the Jury in a past Greenville Light Opera Works production of Trial by Jury, life does imitate art!

Tosca, Tosca. In thinking of our February column on Lego Tosca, I thought of my anger at the Ray Tanner Home Run 12km when organisers mishandled my entry, and I contemplated suicide, naturally jumping off a castle, near the start line. Obviously I must have read too much on Giacomo Puccini's opera! Gymnasts and ballet dancers who are sopranos should be the only ones playing Tosca since the suicide leap is a must.

Rossini – Meow! If we talked Rossini on his birthday, we had to do it. But it was likely de Pearsall who did it built around Rossini's Otello.


Fundraisers and Fines. Look at how Cee-Lo Green, deserving of a $100,000 fine and a 25-point penalty, went off scot-free from his use of improper language at a fund-raiser for Dear Leader this year – and the Low Information Voter ran off and put Dear Leader back in office.

Well, look who caused it to explode? "Pouring here in Michigan. Track needs a jet dryer. They used to have one, but somebody blew it up!"

The Left's New Tactics. “If (turning a National Day of Prayer breakfast into an Occupy Wall Street rally by your speech) does not show how the Left would rather promote Occupiers, Class Warfare, and all sorts of "social gospel" that does not include the Bible at a National Day of Prayer event, this should be a warning that the Left will hijack any event to advance their evil, anti-Christian agenda.”

And yet Obama is pushing for this to be federal law. We saw the consequences at Penn State. “Sexual deviancy special rights activists care about normalising pedophilia and other wicked sexual deviant behaviour at the expense of children.” We saw his endorsement of false "marriage" lead to a winning streak by the sexual deviants, and now they are replacing Freedom of Religion with forced acceptance of their lifestyle of sin.

Prerecorded Music at an Orchestra Event? “Now who are the divos? The group that demanded singing to prerecorded music? It's as bad as the church singers who sing almost exclusively to the can, claiming it sounds better than the real thing. Don't tell me that. If I'm paying for Mary Lee, Jennifer, Mori, or other musicians to play in a concert, I want to hear them. I don't want to hear a recording! Real musicians are not Powerade bottles.”

Do People Understand the Fiscal Cliff​? The sad thing about this current financial issue is that the House passed its budget nine months ago, but the Senate refused, hoping, as they have successfully stalled, Dear Leader to win a second term based on the “praise the government as the deity” mentality. Add to that an Olympics in the UK where they ran propaganda on the virtue of socialism, and teaching of socialism everywhere, and it's only natural that they supported Dear Leader. If I have five dollars, do I spend twenty? ◙

St. Stephen's Day

Christmastide reflections:

"And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us."

Reading Acts 6-8 remind us today why, as believers, we observe December 26 as St. Stephen's Day, in memory of the first martyr of Christendom. ◙

Our Christmas Message

From the chill of Minnesota to the mild Carolinas, we wish our readers at Our Word the message of rejoicing as the Saviour is Born!

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David); to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." ◙

Robert Bork, R.I.P.

One of the lessons often lost in the world of social media is to be careful with words, because they mean things. This is particularly important when it comes to words such as right and wrong, good and evil, and the like. They’re pejorative words; a lawyer might call them “leading,” in that they’re designed to provoke a certain type of response, positive or negative.

The word “bad” is one of the worst kinds of pejoratives. It is a judgmental word, going beyond actions and straight to the heart of a person’s soul. It imputes values not only to deeds, but to motives as well. A man who does something wrong or foolish or misguided is not necessarily a bad man. We’re reminded that we’re to judge the act, not the actor.

Robert Bork, who died yesterday at the age of 85, was a brilliant and accomplished jurist who was done in, professionally, by bad men. More specific than that: he was done in by men such as Edward Kennedy and Joseph Biden.

I don’t hesitate to call them bad men, because they knew that the things they said about Robert Bork were not true. They were outright lies, or they were words twisted out of context, or they were pejoratives of their own that were designed to put Bork in the worst possible light. They sought to keep Bork off the Supreme Court, not because he wasn’t qualified, not because he wouldn’t uphold the law, but because they disagreed with him, they feared the effect he would have on the policies they favored, and they resolved to do whatever it took to deny him confirmation. They weren’t acting out of ignorance – they knew what they were doing. They weren’t acting on good intentions – they knew of their deceptions. And they went ahead with them.

In 1986, Biden was quoted in the Philadelphia Enquirer thusly: “Say the administration sends up Bork and after our investigation he looks a lot like another Scalia, I’d have to vote for him and if the groups tear me apart, that’s the medicine I’ll have to take, I’m not Teddy Kennedy.” As Bork pointed out in The Tempting of America, “My record was in fact almost identical to Scalia’s. . . .”Biden knew this, but it wasn’t convenient for him.* Having boxed himself into a corner (not the first time, nor the last), he chose to willingly deny the facts, because to do so suited his purpose.

*If I'm wrong - if, in fact, Biden really is that clueless that often, then - well, in the words of wrestling announcer Nigel McGuiness, "Everyone has a right to be stupid, but let's be honest, he's kind of abusing the privilege."

And as for Edward Kennedy – well, the less said about him, the better. ‘Tis not good to speak ill of the dead, after all. But Jim Gereghty, calling Kennedy “one of the most despicable men ever to hold high public office in the United States” (and to that I’d only add – why stop there? Surely few people of any prominence have been as despicable as Kennedy), referred to Kennedy’s “calumnious lies designed not simply to prevent Judge Bork from being appointed to the Supreme Court but to soil his character irretrievably.” For example, in Robert Bork’s America, “which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters,” and so on. Kennedy knew these were lies – he would have had to be not only despicable but impossibly stupid otherwise – but he said them anyway, because they suited his purpose.

Joe Nocera, himself a political liberal, provides on the op-ed page of The New York Times a brutally honest assessment of the left’s tactics, asserting that “many of the liberals fighting the nomination also knew they were unfair. That same Advocacy Institute [a liberal think-tank] memo noted that, ‘Like it or not, Bork falls (perhaps barely) at the borderline of respectability.’ It didn’t matter. He had to be portrayed ‘as an extreme ideological activist.’ The ends were used to justify some truly despicable means.”

The fact that Kennedy and Biden and their like did not soil Bork’s character irretrievably – that Robert Bork remained a distinguished and respected man – speaks not only of his character, but of theirs. They may have succeeded in keeping Bork off the Supreme Court, but they were not able to silence him, nor were they able to take away the respect that so many had for him.

Honest assessments of Robert Bork speak of his warmth and humanity, his sense of humor, his loyalty, and his brilliance. He would have served the Supreme Court, and the nation, with distinction and honor. That he was derailed primarily by two bad men, who had (or, in Biden’s case, have) neither distinction nor honor speaks less of Bork than it does of us as a people, for continuing to raise people like them to positions of authority. Corruption, as Bishop Sheen once pointed out, rises, like the bubbles in a glass of beer, from the bottom. ◙

The nature of this commentary is extremely sensitive for me to write. Twenty years ago, a close friend in school was brutally attacked, shot, and nearly killed by a thirteen-year old monster who was sentenced to thirty years in prison, and after raping a second woman, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole under South Carolina's two yellow cards rule on heinous crimes. After Roper v. Simmons declared the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was law albeit it wasn't ratified by the United States Senate, his sentence was overturned for the second conviction and has less than ten years left on his original sentence. Today we've reconnected on social media, and she blogs about homeschooling (great site for parents who are serious about having their children learning things from a Biblically-based worldview, not the humanist worldview that created this monster that caused the shootings).

I offer my prayers for the victims and their families, along with the other children involved with the Connecticut school incident as I write today. In 2 Chronicles 7:14, a verse commonly quoted during the National Day of Prayer (not even observed by the current Administration), the verse states, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." We are in need of that tonight.

For nearly eighty years, the Humanism of John Dewey has been the guiding light for schools and how people are taught in schools. People are taught there is no right, there is no wrong, and your feelings matter. In the postmodern worldview which includes abusing a certain verse in Matthew 7 on judging, our Sunday evening Bible study teacher discussed the folly of the twisting of the verse, and we have noted the twisted logic is taught in schools today. In such twisted logic, a pitch that crosses "an area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap" is not to be called a strike, and on a two-strike count, is not worthy of a punchout.

When schools are not allowed to teach Biblical standards but promote sin as normal, and right and wrong cannot be taught, what gives?

Christina Hoff Summers warned of how girls had the WNT's World Cup winners as role models while boys had Columbine. Well, what is next? A monster at this age who killed his mother and a class of children and more is sad. Humanism's danger is clearly evident now. Have we created monsters where God's Word no longer matters, and feelings mean anything goes?

When God is eliminated, we create the idea there is no right, there is no wrong, the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. The type of monster we created humanism we pay for the consequences today. ◙

As we head to Messiah time

Christmas is always a quandry for this Palmetto State resident. At his home church the schedule calls for a "musical" for the youth called for a Warner Music Group musical, complete with karaoke, and plenty of dance, but nothing else. I had to shake my head considering the endorsement was by a Rick Warren official. Is this suitable for church?

So that was out of the picture. Clearly junk isn't worth a penny in my notebook. Two choices were clear -- one was the Episcopal church nearby with a Händel's Messiah, but I've noticed they are very corrupt considering the diocese line (I live on the other side of the line, where we have no Episcopal church, as our county's churches are now independent Anglican because of their alliance with the Charleston-based South Carolina diocese). Or is a serious piece with serious carols and hymns at the home church of the Flying Pig worth it?

(And yes, if you do remember, Flying Pig refers to the 2011 winner of the women's division at Cincinnati's marathon.)

Naturally after invitations it was a go to "fly with the Flying Pig," even though she and her mother and kids were a bit confused, not familiar with seeing me in a suit and tie (we're runners, so she's used to seeing me in running gear, not a suit). Another of our fellow runners (and fellow triathlete) was playing her violin, and an accompanist that I had for a recital was there on piano, and family joined on the trombone.

Ah, you have to love it when The Many Moods of Christmas had more serious material. Add the Hudson Sisters, legendary musician Dick Goodwin, and our violinist Hill, serious beats jokes.

And I have to remember Monday is Sing-along Messiah, which is another time I can have a shot to sing. Why are these opportunities harder to find? And there is some emotional thoughts into this one, as last year's bass soloist died in April from a terrifying automobile collision. Allison and I discussed the tragedy from then as she reflected tomorrow's event.

Life is truly precious, whether it was that crash in April we're discussing, or the terrifying Connecticut shooting that killed far too many, we must cherish life at every minute. ◙

Retro TV Friday

Have you been keeping track of the TV blog?  If not, check out my version of what might have happened on one of my favorite shows if one of my favorite movies had been real.

Oh, by the way, if you haven't been reading It's About TV, why not?  ◙

The Airplane Conference

“Once word of the proposed conference leaked, other schools, witnessing the Darwinian changes in college football during the period, began nosing around for invitations as well.”

Written yesterday? Not quite. With the news that that the basketball-only members of the Big East Conference are considering either pulling out of the conference or disbanding it altogether, we’re being subjected to yet another round of headlines on conference realignment.

Realignment over the past few years has dealt more or less exclusively with the football side of things, and it usually boils down to two considerations: television and money. Or perhaps more accurately, television’s money – since the revenue generated by television, either through appearances in BCS bowl games or the conference’s television contract, is the prime consideration in almost (?) all of these moves.

It’s caused a lot of us to look back to the relatively stable days of yore, when the Big Ten actually had 10 teams, when all the schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference actually were on the Atlantic Coast, when the Southwestern Conference and the Big 8 existed side by side, and so on. Most of all, we remember when conferences were geographical collections of schools that shared particular commonalities. But when we consider a Big “East” that includes schools from Hawaii, Nevada and Idaho, we just shake our heads.

And yet, it may come as a surprise to learn that the idea of a conference in which the members were connected by planes rather than buses goes back over 60 years.  It certainly did to me, until I ran across it in a couple of books I've been reading for articles on the TV blog: The Fifty-Year Seduction by Keith Dunnavant and College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era by Kurt Kemper.  And thus we come to the origin of the quotation at the beginning of this article.

The idea of a so-called “Airplane” Conference first arose in 1951, promoted, ironically, by Notre Dame President John Cavanaugh.* And, as we might have assumed, “the ability to attract revenue lay at the center of the proposal.” Cavanaugh’s plan included Indiana, Iowa State, Navy, Michigan State, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Army, Penn, Pittsburgh, SMU, Texas, USC, UCLA and Yale – an interesting mix of schools from around the country, including the presence of several which we might scoff at in any discussion of major college football today.

*I say “ironically” because Notre Dame has long been known as a holdout against joining any conference, at least for football.

Although Cavanaugh’s plan never really got off the ground, it laid the groundwork for Thomas Hamilton’s later plan for a National Conference. Hamilton, the AD at Pittsburgh, left in 1957 to head up efforts to form the conference, consisting of 12 members in two divisions, the winners of each division meeting for a de facto national championship game on New Year’s Day in the Rose Bowl. The Eastern Division of Cavanaugh’s National Conference would have included Army, Navy, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Syracuse and Notre Dame, while the Western Division would have included the five members of the AAWU (the conference providing the Western representative in the Rose Bowl) – USC, UCLA, Stanford, California and Washington, plus Air Force.

Hamilton’s plan was an intriguing one, because it didn’t poach on any existing conferences – the AAWU would have been the fulcrum of the conference, and the rest of the members were all independents at the time. And the idea gained great support – one newspaper columnist said “it will mean the beginning of a new era in college football. Harry Stuhldreher, member of Notre Dame’s legendary Four Horsemen, called it “a must.” Another supporter called it the “most outstanding sports idea” of his lifetime. As word leaked out, other schools – Houston, Miami, Penn, Duke and Georgia Tech – tried to position themselves for inclusion.

And yet it never happened. Why?

There are various theories – some thought that the military academies scuttled the idea, but that seemed unlikely; President Eisenhower was a great supporter of the football program at West Point, and it’s likely that membership in such a prominent conference would only help the service academies during the Cold War.* More likely, it was due to the administrators from the West Coast schools, worried about the increasing prominence of big-time sports. (They have fewer scruples today.)

*One called service academy football “travelling advertisements” for the schools.

Whatever the reason, the National Conference never did get off the ground. But isn’t this what we’re seeing today? Speculation is that college football will eventually wind up with four major superconferences, each with 16 members, and when that does happen there will be those who look back and wonder about the good old days. Who knew that progress was always on the agenda, and the good old days were merely an interruption? As I’ve written more than once, the more things change, the more they stay the same. ◙

Opinion Digest

The Opinion Digest is back rolling with five new columns from a variety of people, including a teacher.

Kelly Payne: Taxation, Let's get it right.

Javan Browder: On Egypt and the Arab Spring, Bill Connor was right. 

Lurita Doan: The Democrats' assault on language. 

Mark Steyn: The British Royal Couple has nothing on Dear Leader (considering how much we spend on Dear Leader and family versus what the royals spend). 

Albert Mohler: The Injustice of Helpful Parents – Yet More Insanity ◙

After reading Lauren Green's article on sacred music

While reading an article by Fox News reporter Lauren Green, attending an event in Italy's Foundation for Sacred Music and Arts (“La Fondazione Pro Musica E Arte Sacra”), she noted, “While today most sacred music of the great composers like Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, and others, are performed in secular concert halls, the festival aims to reverse that trend -- at least in the eternal city. Their respective travel businesses make it all happen.”

Peter Bahou (of Peter's Way Tours) notes, “even world-renowned musicians, who've performed for presidents and princes, are brought to tears when Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' (from his Ninth Symphony) or Mozart's 'Requiem,' are presented under the high altars of some of the venues like the grand Cathedral of St. Paul Outside the Walls, or the soaring arches of the Basilica of St. Mary Major.”

Miss Green also notes the differences between time periods of sacred music, with the Gregorian Chant representing the Medieval, the voices of Palestrina and Thoams Tallias representing the Renissance, with Bach being Baroque (which Leah Hungerford said during an early voice lesson was my voice).

Those excerpts forced me to remind myself while we have ejected the sacred music of the great composers from the church hall, we have replaced it with modern junk devoid of doctrine and theology, built around emotions, with 100-decibel loud rock music from the Michael Jackson Library, very secular. How have we come from the seriousness of sacred music being thrown off the halls of churches to replacing it with the latest in secularised pop tunes with loud rock instruments or karaoke? When houses of worship are playing Highway to Hell, Party Rock Anthem, Gangnam Style (duck! Can I have the Lowe's Holden Commodore with its Safety Car lights flashing to stop this insanity?) or the latest Top 40 song from the Billboard charts, it's clearly time we restore our church music back to church halls and take the pop drivel out of our cathedrals. ◙

Last week, we saw the jackpot for one of the two multiple-state lottery games reach a value of five hundred million dollars in an annuitised jackpot.

It makes me shake my head to consider the number of people piling into groceries, convenience stores, and other wild places (some in dangerous parts of towns) to spend a Thomas Jefferson paper currency (or more) to purchase “chances” at winning this jackpot (for which the odds are slim to none). Why would people trust their entire fortune on the luck of one draw at 2259 hours (GMT-5) to see if they have five numbers and the special red number to clinch that pot of which the person is not expected to even win. Meanwhile, the President and his group are interested in telling people to cease participation in the market in favour of trusting the government, with new taxes aimed at the investors but not at those who participate in state-run numbers rackets.

Hard work is a virtue, but we have seen it replaced, especially with the results of the election earlier this month, with the idea government is a deity, and the entitlement generation has taught us government, not hard work, is the best virtue. Luck from the government is being encouraged, while we discourage hard work and investing with the masses piling to the numerous numbers racket locations, wanting their two dollars to spend on a worthless ticket.

So we no longer trust God, we no longer want hard work, we just want the government to pay us aplenty. That's the message from the lottery lines.

What gives?

And oh, by the way: Sony's Glee is going “Gangnam Style” and they're singing it in Korean. I don't think the Greenville Light Opera Works would want that, considering both what I've read from Renée Fleming's The Inner Voice about opera before the 20th century, when supertitles did not exist, the operas were sung in the tongue of the region, not the original tongue of the opera, which is how our Upstate opera company sings their operettas in English translation. If the Upstate opera company can sing translations of great operas, why can't this raunchy pop culture show sing a Korean tune translated? Turns out many Korean tunes (K-pop) popular with the youth of Korea are translated from other languages from Swedish pop factories. If they tried to sing other K-pop ditties might they try to sing those in English? How many times have I seen a Greenville Light Opera Works singer sing the wonderful opera pieces that should be in Italian instead in English? That was then, and this light company does it the way it was. ◙